Hyperbaric Chamber Therapy in Hanahan, SC

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCIV) — Sometimes, in the toughest of times, it’s the littlest thing from the most unlikely place.

“My purpose in life has always been to look after kids and their purpose,” North Charleston High School (NCHS) assistant coach and Lowcountry native Ray Mullins said. “Help them grow confidence. Coaching the game, I fell in love with the game. Gave me confidence and I tried to instill confidence in kids who needed places to grow.”

Mullins graduated from Hanahan. Played for Lander. He’s coached in the area for over two decades.

Read more: Northwood Academy basketball player surprised on court on senior night

“Coach Ray, I am forever grateful for him,” Summerville native and Pinewood Prep grad Michael Wright said. “There is a short list of coaches. Coach Eidson, my dad, who impact a player, and Ray was one of those guys. The moment I walked into the gym, he took me under his wing and believed in me as a basketball player.”

Their bond is deeply rooted. But, lives move on. Wright went to Pinewood Prep. He played AAU basketball for Mullins as a 15 year old. Wright is now a fifth year graduate student at University of Illinois Springfield. He plans on playing professional basketball overseas. Mullins, now teaching and coaching at NCHS, the place where his life forever changed less than a year ago.

“I was in Mr. Darby’s office at NCHS when I found out - they just told me - stage 4,” he said. “You think about life. You think about how things are going to work out - you hear stage 4. Nowadays, stage 4 isn’t a good thing to hear, but with technology and people wanting to support, there is a plan out there for you.”

Just as cancer spreads, so does word of it. (WCIV)

Just as cancer spreads, so does word of it.

“Terrible,” Wright said. “I remember finding out through Facebook. Something he had gone through. Somebody who cares so much about community and given so much to community through basketball, to have something like that effect their life, never like to see that.”

So, Wright took his emotions into his own hands. Literally. During the “Coaches versus cancer” night - he held up a sign. It simply said, “I suit up for Ray Mullins”.

Read more: Clifford overcomes stutter for highly successful 40 year career

“It’s humbling to me, brings me hope, great things in humanity,” Mullins said. “He did surprise me with the salute at the game the other night - super proud of him and what he’s become as a man. Just super proud. Gives me hope, doesn’t allow me to quit- didn’t know what quitting was until I started this chemo thing. They say not to quit, stay strong.”

“I got too much to pay it forward for, it’s not just about me,” he continued. “About kids I’m coaching. Kids that are fighting the same fight against cancer.”

In basketball terms, impact, is a “give and go”.

Hanahan High School coach Brian Mitchell enters his 20th season as the Hawks’ handler in baseball.

He expects this year’s bunch to look about like most before it on the diamond. As the curtains open on the season, Mitchell’s squad is No. 4 in Class AAA by the South Carolina Baseball Coaches Association.

Last spring, the Hawks won 25 games and capped the campaign in the Lower State tournament.

“You could hit repeat on our last 10 years,” said Mitchell, who has more than 300 career victories. “We have some pitching and defense to be competitive. We’ve got to find some bats. We’ve got to hit. How far we’re able to go comes down to generating some runs. How are we going to be hitting at the end of the year?”

A recent practice was spent grinding at the plate, working on small ball. The Hawks bunted for more than an hour. Mitchell doesn’t think the Hawks are going to be able to sit on the bases and wait for doubles for run production.

“We’re going to have to be a hard-nosed contact team and put pressure on teams on the bases,” Mitchell said.

The Hawks begin the regular season on March 9 at Fort Dorchester and follow with road clashes at James Island on March 10 and West Ashley on March 13. Hanahan opens its home slate on March 15 versus Gainesville (Fla.) High School.

A stellar group of seniors are back to guide the journey this spring. Nick Cappello, a catcher/pitcher, batted .348 and posted a 7-0 mark on the mound with a 1.55 ERA as a junior. Catcher Mason Brady batted .333 in 2022. Outfielders Brayden Joseph and Kwame Parker made the most of their opportunities at the dish last season, hitting .441 and .419 in a total of 79 plate appearances. Pitcher/infielder Braylon Mitchell garnered three pitching victories as a junior but is currently sidelined with an injury.

From the junior class, brothers Landon Gomes and Hunter Gomes are key returners who made an impact in 2022. Landon, an outfielder, batted .328 and Hunter was 8-0 from the mound with a 2.53 ERA.

Additional arms on the bump are Gabe Dotterweich, Porter Sprovero, Nate Humphrey and Lucas Brown. Joining Brady and Cappello on the other end of the battery is Joey Smith.

Joseph and Sprovero are at first base while Jacob Bunting and Riley Turner are competing for time at second base. Camden Kackley moves into shortstop, replacing all-state player Aryan Patel, and Hunter Gomes is on the hot corner.

More players expected to roam the outfield grass are Dylan Crocker and Harry Swindal.

“I think we have good chemistry,” Mitchell said. “They’re all pulling for each other. We have some position battles but they know we’re all pulling in the same direction. They’re used to winning. They know it starts with team chemistry. These guys understand the teams that win are the teams that do all the small things right.”

HANAHAN, S.C. (WCBD) – The owner of a fitness training company in Hanahan that has been working with kids and adults for a few years is calling on the community to help keep his business open.

Kendrick Robinson opened The Factory Sports and Fitness Training in Hanahan a year before the coronavirus pandemic hit the United States to help train people in basketball, football, and other athletics.

“It was something that God brought to me. He gave me a vision,” said Robinson. “I wanted to have a facility where the youth in our community could (better) selves and have a safe place where they can come and train.”

“He always helps out. He helps out with kids like schoolwork and stuff like that before training,” said Christian Gray, who has been coming to the program for four years.

Robinson said working with the youth is his passion. But things have been tough financially, he said.

“Our rates are really not expensive, but if they’re not able to do training, we try to do charitable giving would give out free sessions,” explained Robinson.

He went on to say, “We kind of gotten [sic] to a rough patch since Covid. We had a business plan, and it kind of altered all of that, and we’ve been playing catch-up ever since.”

Robinson decided Sunday to let the public know they might have to close next month and started a GoFundMe in hopes of finding some assistance.

“Not something I wanted to go public with, but closed mouths don’t get fed. God revealed that to me, he told me to make sure I keep this place open and get the help that we needed from the community. The response has been, man amazing.”

More than $2,500 has already come in from the community, of the $10,000 they need.

“It’s been amazing to get all the feedback and support from the supporters we’ve had over the years and knowing that we’re doing the right thing just by being transparent with the community and letting them know that it hasn’t always been easy.”

If you would like to help, please click here.

HANAHAN, S.C. (WCIV) — Hanahan High School has named Milan Turner as the next varsity football coach.

Turner was announced as the high school's head football coach in a press release on Jan. 24.

Read more: 4 months after departure, BCSD says former Hanahan HS head coach Art Craig retired

“We are elated to welcome Coach Turner to the Hawk family,” Hanahan Principal Tom Gallus said in a statement. “Our community is very fortunate to have a coach of this caliber to lead and develop our student-athletes on and off the field. Coach Turner is a proven educator and leader. He knows what it takes to build a successful high school football program and to ensure that each student is prepared for their next steps after high school. I look forward to serving alongside Coach Turner and seeing our Hawks shine under the Friday night lights.”

According to the press release, Turner has been an educator since 1994 and has coached in six state championship games during his time at five Georgia high schools. He was most recently serving as the director of high school relations on the football staff for Georgia Southern University.

Read more: Hanahan High School announces interim head football coach in place of Art Craig

"First, I would like to thank Coach Clay Helton and Georgia Southern University for the incredible opportunity I had to serve this year on the football staff," Turner said. "I want to also thank Principal Tom Gallus, Athletic Director Kim Joseph, the search committee, and the Berkeley County Board of Education for this incredible opportunity to be a teacher and head football coach at Hanahan High School. I am extremely excited for the future of our school and athletic program. I cannot wait to get to work with our team and to meet the Hanahan community. Wendi and I feel extremely blessed."

"Thank you to Coach Helton, Staff, Players, Administration and Eagle Nation for an exciting journey this year. Thank you for letting me be a small part of something Special! The future is bright at Georgia Southern, You ain’t seen nothin’ yet! #GATA #HailSouthern," Turner's Twitter post read.

FMRP and tumor immunity

Many tumors have developed mechanisms rendering them resistant to attack and destruction by the immune system. Zeng et al. report that fragile X mental retardation protein (FMRP) is highly expressed in human cancers, and they propose that it is involved in antitumor immunity. FMRP is best known as an RNA-binding protein that regulates the stability and translation of neuronal RNAs. By genetically inactivating the FMRP gene in mouse cancer cells, the researchers found that FMRP-deficient tumors had reduced growth and were more susceptible to attack by T lymphocytes. Tumor cells lacking FMRP showed remodeling of the tumor microenvironment, macrophage polarization, and upregulation of the chemokines involved in effector CD8⁺ T cell recruitment. —PNK

Structured Abstract

Cancer biology and therapy have been transformed by knowledge about immunoregulatory mechanisms that govern adaptive immunity. Although some forms of treatment resistance are related to the intentionally transitory operations of the adaptive immune system, others reflect more subtle requirements to modulate the immune system in different contexts. In this work, we identified an immunoregulatory mechanism involving the neuronal RNA binding protein fragile X mental retardation protein (FMRP), which broadly regulates protein translation and mRNA stability and is aberrantly up-regulated in multiple forms of cancer.

This study was motivated by reports that cancer cells naturally overexpressing FMRP, whose loss of expression in developing neurons causes cognitive defects, were invasive and metastatic. We investigated the expression of FMRP in human tumors, further assessed its tumor-promoting functions in mouse models of cancer, and evaluated its association with prognosis for human cancer patients.

When human tumor tissue microarrays were immunostained for expression of FMRP, a majority of tumors expressed FMRP, whereas cognate normal tissues did not. To investigate the functional significance of this broad up-regulation, the FMR1 gene was ablated through CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing (FMRP-KO, where KO indicates knockout) in mouse cancer cell lines that were inoculated into both immunodeficient and syngeneic immunocompetent mice to establish tumors in parallel with wild-type (WT) FMRP-expressing cell lines. Mice bearing FMRP-KO tumors had similar survival compared with isogenic WT tumors in immunodeficient hosts, indicating that FMRP was not involved in stimulating tumor growth per se. By contrast, tumor growth was impaired and survival extended in immunocompetent hosts, implicating the adaptive immune system. Indeed, FMRP-expressing WT tumors were largely devoid of T cells, whereas FMRP-KO tumors were highly inflamed. Depletion of CD8 and CD4 T cells restored tumor growth and reduced survival, implicating FMRP in immune evasion in WT tumors. WT and FMRP-KO tumors were profiled by single-cell RNA sequencing, revealing marked differences in genome-wide transcription and abundance of cancer cells, macrophages, and T cells. To elucidate the effects of this multifaceted regulatory protein, we performed several functional perturbations, revealing that: FMRP-expressing cancer cells produce the chemokine interleukin-33 (IL-33), which induces regulatory T cells, as well as tumor-secreted protein S (PROS1) ligand and exosomes that elicit tumor-promoting (M2) macrophages. Both cell types are immunosuppressive, collectively contributing to the barrier against T cell attack. By contrast, FMRP-KO cancer cells down-regulate all three factors and up-regulate C-C motif chemokine ligand 7 (CCL7), which helps recruit and activate T cells. Additionally, immunostimulatory macrophages develop in this context that express three proinflammatory chemokines—CCL5, CXCL9, and CXCL10—which cooperate with CCL7 in recruiting T cells. Finally, neither FMR1 mRNA nor FMRP protein levels were sufficient to predict outcomes in cohorts of cancer patients. Recognizing FMRP’s function as an RNA binding protein that modulates mRNA stability and hence levels in transcriptome datasets, a gene signature reflecting FMRP’s cancer regulatory activity (involving 156 genes) was developed by comparing FMRP-expressing versus FMRP-deficient cancer cells, both in culture and within tumors. Our FMRP cancer activity signature was prognostic for survival across multiple human cancers; anticorrelated with the intensity of T cell infiltration in different tumor types, consistent with FMRP’s immunosuppressive effects; and was associated with comparatively poor responses to immune checkpoint inhibitors and immune-dependent chemotherapy in selected cohorts.

FMRP is revealed as a regulator of a network of genes and cells in the tumor microenvironment that contribute to the capability of tumors to evade immune destruction.

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Abstract

Many human cancers manifest the capability to circumvent attack by the adaptive immune system. In this work, we identified a component of immune evasion that involves frequent up-regulation of fragile X mental retardation protein (FMRP) in solid tumors. FMRP represses immune attack, as revealed by cancer cells engineered to lack its expression. FMRP-deficient tumors were infiltrated by activated T cells that impaired tumor growth and enhanced survival in mice. Mechanistically, FMRP’s immunosuppression was multifactorial, involving repression of the chemoattractant C-C motif chemokine ligand 7 (CCL7) concomitant with up-regulation of three immunomodulators—interleukin-33 (IL-33), tumor-secreted protein S (PROS1), and extracellular vesicles. Gene signatures associate FMRP’s cancer network with poor prognosis and response to therapy in cancer patients. Collectively, FMRP is implicated as a regulator that orchestrates a multifaceted barrier to antitumor immune responses.